Marinate

Marinate

Marinate is one of my new favourite words. Weird, I know. I first heard it used outside of a kitchen context from my hero and idol Meghan Currie (below is a cheeky picture of me fan girling with her btw). Used in the context outside of chicken, marinate is a good, beautiful word. Ever wonder why you feel (other than once a while when you went too deep) so delicious and so wanted to go hmmmmmm when you come out of a long, static pose? It’s because our meat has been marinating in it. Ever wonder why you feel such uplifted after a long period of being with someone you enjoy and love being with? It’s your inner and the brain marinated in the good vibes.

I’m high on vibes at the moment. Being back from Milan to a workshop, my body is aching. From sleeping on the hard floor, from the intensity of having cancelled flight and stuck at airport for hours at a time. But man am I high as a kite. As I’m sitting here reviewing my life, I’m incredibly happy.

Perhaps it’s the newfound attitude towards my finances v.s. Happiness. Perhaps it’s the sun. Perhaps it’s the plants I’m slowly accumulating and submerging myself in in my flat. Perhaps it’s the fact that I’ve stopped my alternative training and went back to yoga. Perhaps I’m just still high from the workshop. I’m enjoying my classes, I’m enjoying my practice, im enjoying and free time, I’m enjoying my marriage, I’m even enjoying training my birds again.
The last month has been a difficult one. In my moment of self doubt and self manifested financial security, I had allowed myself to be afraid, to be terrified of not working enough, to be terrified of not being a good enough teacher. And that fear has shrunk me, physically and mentally.

I’m very good at worrying, I am, in fact, raised and programmed to worry. And fighting this survival ability that’s been hard coded in myself is hard. It’s that shadow of uncertainty that I sometimes can’t seem to shake, as much as I display myself as a “fuck it” sort of person, there just as much uncertainty and holding on that is hidden inside of me.

This last month I have been doing an experiment, an experiment of doing non-yoga (I know!), I practiced (yoga) very little, and practice very much (non yoga stuff). In this month I was strengthening, I was mobilising, I was conditioning my body to be stronger, in other ways, but not yoga. And I felt shitty, in the end of the month I dragged every time I had to practice, I dragged going to teach, I dragged working, I dragged walking up the stairs. As I picked up my yoga practice again in desperation, I got a shock. It is like my mind was free again, it is like my body has waken up again. In my experiment I had slowly but heavily fallen back into my old self, the self that I had somehow forgotten, the self that wasn’t happy. It wasn’t until I practiced yoga again did I realise how much I missed it, how much I NEEDED it, how much my body and mind strive for it.

It is in this practice I found space, it is in this practice I found love, this is in this practice I found peace. It is in this practice I learned to love myself, and those around me. It is in this raw, hard coded format of movement, that I found the place in myself.